Couples' Therapy
by David N. Brown
Summary: Sequel to "Trip to Vegas". In their new home, Columbus and co. face a sentence worse than battle with the undead: mandatory psychiatric counseling! David N. Brown resides in Mesa, Arizona.
1. Chapter 1

**I decided to go ahead and keep moving on with Zombieland fics. I don't plan this as an action story, just a vehicle for introducing a setting and letting the characters bounce off each other.**

**The Order**

Circus Circus had been a hotel and casino with almost 3,800 rooms, an RV Park and its own indoor . Now it was home for 50,000 survivors of the zombie plague. Like lords and peasants in a castle under siege, they had to work together to keep out attackers, attend to daily needs, and maintain a functional society within the confines of a single building.

As was typical of the survivors, the inhabitants of Circus Circus had cast off their names in favor of other, often more esoteric designations: places of birth, their high school or college, their favorite movies and shows. For the casino senior staff, they were addressed only by title. The man who stood before Tallahassee, Columbus, Little Rock and Wichita was no less than Chief Executive Officer, and he did not look happy. "In just the week you have been with us," he said, "you have already made valuable contributions to our community. But there are concerns that you do not fully appreciate what being part of our community means.

"First, there is the matter of the furnishings in your room... Our lowest estimate of the value of the items you intentionally destroyed is $2,000. That is, of course, measured in pre-pandemic dollars."

"It was our room," said Wichita.

Little Rock pointed a finger at her: "She started it."

The CEO exhaled. "No, it is not your room. It is the property of the community, given to you. We understand you come here from a different set of circumstances, and need time to adjust. But the first and most essential lesson you must learn is that in here, space and resources are absolutely fixed. You cannot destroy your dwelling in one night and move to another in the morning. And then there is Lucky... a historic Vegas landmark."

Wichita patted her husband's knee. "He really doesn't like clowns."

At the entrance of the casino stood a 123-foot neon clown. Multiple blast holes marked where the clown's face had been.

The CEO sighed. "After lengthy discussion, the board decided that you will be allowed to stay, and not penalized for your actions. But this is contingent on your attending psychiatric counseling."

Tal's jaw sagged. "I think I'd rather take my chances with the zombies."

"There is also one more thing," the CEO said, looking pointedly at Columbus and Wichita. "Privacy is necessarily limited, and those who have lived here for some time have learned not to be shocked too easily. But this has always been a family-oriented business, and there are certain limits to be observed even now. Do I make myself clear?"

Little Rock hid her face in her hands. "I told you doing it in the buffet was a bad idea," Columbus muttered.


	2. Four people, six couples

**Columbus's story here is semi-autobiographical. I think his character makes a lot of sense in these terms, which is a major reason why I like "Zombieland".**

The Doctor introduced himself as Stanford. He was perhaps forty, and reminded Tal of Niles from _Frasier_. "I was here for a convention, when things went wrong," he said by way of explanation. "In fact, I was making a presentation, when the infected broke into the ground floor of the Sky Rise tower. We barred the door, held a vote, and then mounted an offensive, with nothing but briefcases, chairs and a fire extinguisher... They, the people of the community, call us the Thirty, after the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. Almost embarrassing, to talk about it now."

"Well, any spit* that can kill zombies with a chair is worth listening to in my book," said Tal. Stanford made a note.

"Now, first I will explain my technique," he said. "I specialize in counseling for families, and other groups. It has been my observation that problems in the family as a whole most often start with a dysfunction in the relationship between just two of the members. In your `family', there are four people, but six potential pairs: Columbus and Tallahassee; Columbus and Wichita; Columbus and Little Rock; Wichita and Little Rock; Wichita and Tallahassee; and Tallahassee and Little Rock. What I would like to do is hold a series of interviews, with two of you at a time. But for our first session, as a baseline, I will be talking to you as a group." As the session went on, he took notes:

_Patient Columbus Ohio: Clear case of Asperger's Syndrome, with OCD tendencies... No history of diagnosis or age-appropriate intervention... Uses avoidance or control to compensate for environmental sensitivities and low social competence..._

"I mean, lots of kids don't like clowns. There's a phobia named after it, for chrissakes. But it started with me for a different reason: I'm pretty sure it was the face paint. I puked the first time they tried to make me fingerpaint. I couldn't stand having it on my skin. Just seeing other kids do it could make me gag. I reacted the same way the first time I saw a clown, and it always seemed to me that anyone who would put paint on their face for a living has to be messed up."

_Patient Tallahassee Florida: Arrested development and ADD tendencies... Conceals high degree of sensitivity and empathy toward feelings of others... Underlying issues with depression, possible suicidal tendencies... Acts out homicidal fantasies against "zombies" by dissociation of the infected from humanity... Obsessive, borderline delusional fixation with _Hostess_ products..._

"I remember having my first Twinkie when I was three. I loved 'em ever since. The Cupcakes are good; Ding-Dongs are okay; but there's nothing I like better than a G-D Twinkie."

_Patient Little Rock Arkansas: History of childhood abuse... Strong relationship with (foster) sister... Negative aspect is possessiveness, bordering on codependency... Also developing strong attachment to Tallahassee, which may evolve into Oedipal issues... Very repressed attitudes toward sexuality..._

"We have one room, two beds. I sleep on the bed with Tal... Yeah, _of course _I'm okay with that, it's not like he's a freak or something... But my sister and _him_, they're messed up. They do it every night, whether I'm awake or not."

_Patient Wichita Kansas: Controlling and codependent tendencies, with extreme fear of abandonment... Relates to others through role playing... Can invent past experiences in a short time, deceiving self as well as others... High potential for physical and/or emotional abuse... _

"Yeah, I think my husband's hot! I wanted him as soon as I saw him..."


	3. Reasons to Live

**More Sara Groves lyrics, this time from "Loving A Person". Small changes made for conciseness and grammar. Also more of my experiences and thoughts via Columbus.**

_Loving people just the way they are, it's no small thing_

_Takes some time to see things through_

_Sometimes things change, sometimes we're waiting_

_Hold onto me, I'll hold onto you_

_Little Rock and Wichita_

"I know we haven't been together that long, but it's hard to remember what life was like without each other," Wichita said. "Five years- two in foster care hell, three on the road staying ahead of cops and criminals and _then_ the zombies. I've always kept her safe, and in a lot of ways she's taken even better care of me." She hugged her sister.

Little Rock hugged her back, hard, but then removed herself to arm's length. "Yeah, but things have changed since Columbus. It's not that I don't like him- he's smart, and sweet when you get to know him- but she never would have been interested in him before." Wichita abruptly began to shed tears, but Little Rock returned a firm, scolding gaze. "Admit it: Without the zombie apocalypse, you wouldn't have given him a second glance."

While Wichita was still trying abortively to speak, Stanford interjected, "Perhaps you are the one who made the change." Both looked at him in puzzlement. "Little Rock, you are entering puberty. It is the beginning of physical adulthood, and of interest in romantic partnership. It would be enough to make your sister think of finding a partner herself, and in choosing a partner for what she would value in a lasting relationship rather than a short-term liaison."

Little Rock looked mutely at her sister, who finally squeaked, "Yes... maybe... What I've thought about most... is that I want you to see that a guy can make you happy."

Little Rock embraced her sister again. "I appreciate it... but could you try not to `show' it while I'm in the same room??"

_Columbus and Wichita_

Wichita wiped tears from her eyes as she listened to her husband's story. "...I almost never tried to fight them, because I knew it wouldn't do any good. But I got very good at running, and hiding, oh, and climbing. I learned to run in a few circles to lose them, then jump the fence. I would run just far enough to be out of sight, and wait as long as I needed to. When I was as sure as I could be that the coast was clear, I would go back over the fence and try to run back inside before I was counted late returning from recess."

"Didn't you ask anyone for help?" Wichita rasped.

"Who was there to ask, and for what? The playground monitor never gave a * except when I hit back. Most of the time I didn't know which kids were after me, so I couldn't report them anyway. My parents cared, and I suppose the teachers cared- probably why I wasn't counted tardy more often than I was- but they were never there to stop it. And the other kids? If they weren't already after me, then they were just more people who stood by and watched. And that's why I avoided people for so long: They drove me away."

Wichita tried to put an arm around him, but he flinched away. "When I spent time with other survivors, before Tal, I usually ended up wanting to scream at them. They almost always say something like, `I can't believe this is happening!' I wanted to tell them, why act surprised? It didn't take a virus to send Nazis after Jews, or Hutus after Tutsis, or people just like you after me."

He finally reciprocated his wife's gestures by taking her hand. "I guess that's another reason I decided I wanted to stay with you. You knew how tough the world can be, zombies or no."

_Columbus and Tallahassee_

"Come on, doc," Columbus said. "I love this guy, but there's no way his Twinkie fixation can be healthy."

Stanford leaned forward. "Do you honestly want my opinion? Here it is: Whatever else one may say, his `obsession' kept him alive." Leaning back, he continued in a scholarly tone, "Virtually every survivor has a `quest', usually a place to reach or a person to find. That gives them something to live and fight for- until the quest is fulfilled."

Columbus thought instantly of what had almost been Wichita's parting words to him: _"I hope you find who you're looking for. And don't let go when you do."_

"But the search for the last Twinkie is necessarily open-ended. When he can't find it one place, he can always move on to search elsewhere. No failure- and for that matter no success- is necessarily final. I suspect that, on some level, he has always known this."

Tal shrugged. "Could be. I'm not the doc."

Columbus's eyes narrowed. "Now it makes sense!" he exclaimed. "I was afraid you were going to try to kill me when I blasted that box of Twinkies. I thought you were either going to cry or start eating what was left of them anyway. But you didn't even lick your fingers! And it was all because you never cared as much about finding the Twinkies as you did about looking for them!"

Tal rebutted, "You want to see how hard I can punch?"


	4. Needing

**Needing**

_There's a lot of pain in reaching out and trying_

_It's a vulnerable place to be_

_Love and pride can't occupy the same space, baby_

_And only one makes you free_

_Columbus and Wichita_

Columbus looked at Wichita much the same way he had when she laughed at Bill Murray's demise. "It's not that I don't like it," she said. "I like it because I can tell you're into it, and that helps get me into it. C'mon! It's the same as when you tune into me... And by the way, there's no way I can buy him being bad at body language. You read _my_ body, right?" She gave him a playful nudge. He just folded his arms.

As he lay in bed that night, a voice whispered in his ear, "So explain to me one more time- exactly _how_ did this happen?" On the other bed, Wichita was curled up with her sister.

_Columbus and Little Rock_

"I don't see why we have to go through this," Little Rock said. "He's a nice guy who managed to bag my sister. Good for you, but so what?"

"But we have to be around each other, and we have to get along somehow," Columbus said. "And I have always liked you." He started to put an arm around her, but withdrew as she entered an aggressive sulk.

"Perhaps we should move things back," Stanford said. 'Why don't you share a little about your biological family..."

"What's to tell? My father left, my mother was never around, and my `real' sister preferred her freak boyfriend over me!"

"Does that make you see Columbus as a threat?"

"No! But he _is_ a bit of a freak."

He turned to Columbus. "Why don't you tell Little Rock about your family."

After a moment of surprise and discomfort, he said, "Well, I guess anything I've got, my dad probably had worse. He mostly worked from home, spent most of the time in his office with the door shut, and when he wasn't working he would watch videos of old TV shows. He got me a microscope for my tenth birthday- I think that sealed the deal on my fear of germs. When he decided I needed to learn about sex, he handed me a medical textbook. The furthest we ever went on a family vacation was a three-day trip to Chicago to look at the Field Museum. My mom wasn't as bad. She would spend time with me, help with school. She was the one who put together the paperwork that got me a scholarship at A&M. But we still didn't talk much. When she said `I love you', I would just say, `I know.'"

"I get it, your family sucked," Little Rock said. "That doesn't make us BFFs."

"Let's talk about something you mentioned in the last interview with Wichita. When the Pandemic broke out, you decided you had to reach them," Stanford said. "Why did you make that decision?"

"They were my family," he said almost by reflex. Under the doctor's probing case,he added, "I- They needed me."

"They needed? Or you needed? And why?"

"I needed... to make it up to them. To do better."

"You think things would have changed?" the doctor said.

"I know things would have been different," Columbus said. He added defiantly, "I changed."

"I will grant you that. But change in a relationship doesn't depend on just one person, does it? You knew your parents better than anyone. If you had gotten back to them, alive, and made all the changes you wanted to on your own part, would they have done the same for you?"

"They would have had a chance."

"They did have a chance, many times. You didn't fail them by not giving them one more."

Columbus put his head in his hands. After a moment's hesitation, Little Rock put a hand on her shoulder.

"Now what?" Tal said that night. Columbus and Little Rock had fallen asleep holding hands on the couch.


	5. Resolutions

**Resolutions**

_If we go looking for offense we're gonna find it_

_If we go looking for real love we're gonna find it_

_Let's find out the beauty of seeing things through_

_Hold onto me, and I'll hold onto you_

_Wichita and Little Rock_

"Yeah, we had some privacy issues before we got here," Wichita said.

"Yeah, like when I saw you sitting on your boyfriend's face!" Little Rock snapped.

"What about the time we walked in on Tal in the shower?" Wichita said. She smirked, and her sister almost reluctantly giggled. "That had to be way worse than anything you've seen me do! Oh, and what was it he said, in that stupid lisp?"

"_`You can always depend on the kindness of strangers!'"_ They both burst out laughing, but when they quieted, they both looked thoughtful.

_Tallahassee and Wichita_

"I guess we both care about Columbus, and we both care about Little Rock," Wichita said. "It's enough for us to get along all right."

"Yeah, we always got along fine," Tal said. But there was a dark look on his face.

Stanford leaned in. "Anything you have to tell me will be kept in the strictest confidence. And I believe it would be helpful if you did."

"Nothing happened," Wichita said, as much to Tal as to him.

"Yeah, same way nothing happened when the Ruskies sent missiles to Cuba," Tal said.

"It was before I got interested in Columbus," Wichita said. "It would never have gone anywhere. We both knew that. I guess we've never really talked about it before."

"I don't know if you could say we've really talked since then," Tal said. Stanford leaned back and nodded.

_Tallahassee and Little Rock_

"I believe it's time to talk about something you may both be- sensitive about," said Stanford. "Little Rock, you have said you are very comfortable sleeping in the same bed with Tal. Am I to understand you both feel no attraction to each other?" They both looked at him in disbelief and disgust, then looked at each other, then awkwardly looked _away_ from each other.

He was the one to finally speak. "Don't be sick, doc! She could be my kid!"

"So, you would say the way you feel about her is paternal? And that she likewise thinks of you only as a paternal figure?"

"* yes!"

"Then has it occurred to you that it is normal for there to be a certain level of sexual attraction between a girl and her father?" Tal all but choked. "You see, what has been called the `Oedipal complex' is really nothing more or less than an extreme form of what is now called the `love map'. In the `mapping' process, a child develops his or her standards for a future mate, based on the example of the parent. When the child begins to seek a mate, she will inevitably go through a period of attraction toher father, or those she perceives as a father figure. In healthy development, this will serve to show her what qualities she will desire most. Without the benefit of this perspective, it can lead either to inappropriate behavior or to the repression of sexual feeling."

Tal and Little Rock looked at each other, then scooted ever so slightly away from each other. "Let's try this for perspective. Little Rock, if you were grown up, and Tal was your own age, would you consider making him your boyfriend?"

She nodded and smiled. "Sure!"

"And Tallahassee, if you were 13 again, would you want Little Rock to be your girlfriend?"

He nodded and slowly smiled. "Yeah, I suppose I would... But knowin' what I was like at 13, I'd need to go back to- well, as old as I am now so I could kick my own butt!"

_Tallahassee and Columbus_

"Ow! What was that for?" Columbus cried out, clutching his bruised ear.

"That is to show you how hard I can punch," Tal said, getting to his feet. "Now get up, b*, an' show me how hard you can punch!"

Wichita heard a dull metallic clang from a living room.

"I'm going to get a bad write-up, aren't I?" Columbus said as he set down the fire extinguisher.

"All things considered," Stanford said as he helped Tal get back to his feet, "it could be worse."


	6. Report

_Lovin' me just the way I am it's no small thing _

_It's the whole thing_

_Takes some time, takes some time._

_The patients represent a classic case of a group suffering from unresolved conflicts between individual members. Their situation has been aggravated by a lack of personal boundaries, predictable given the intensity of their relationships and shared experiences compared to their relatively short time together._

"I'm getting along with Little Rock better," Columbus said.

"Yeah, and Wichita's doing more with Tal and me," Little Rock said Wichita brushed her hair back nervously.

Tal rubbed his chin, and the lingering bruise on his temple. "It's been good. Really, I've been waiting for Columbus to put up a fight for once."

"Well, since we started these sessions... things have been better in bed," Wichita said with a giggle. "Not that they were bad before." Columbus blushed, Little Rock hid her face in her hands " But the biggest difference is that we're talking a lot more about what we want from each other. I'm doing less to be what I think he wants, more to show him who I am. We've learned new things about each other, and for every problem that comes up, it seems like there's another that gets solved."

"Look," said Little Rock, "can we all just say what's on our minds? When we got together, as far as we knew it was just us four. We didn't choose each other; it was a matter of being together or being alone. But now we're in among 40,000 people. How do we know we're really right for each other?"

Columbus put an arm possessively around Wichita. "Your sister means more to me than I ever thought a person could. You do, too."

"Hey, you're a 13-year old girl who swears and shoots," Tal said. "If there's anybody I belong with, it's you."

"The important thing," Columbus said, "is that we made promises to each other. I'll keep them, whether I feel like it or not. We all can."

"But how do we keep from driving each other crazy?"

"We've always been crazy," said Tal. "This is just the first chance we've had to express ourselves."

"You stole that from a movie," Columbus said. "But it's pretty good."

_Their greatest strength is an understanding of their own and each other's strengths and weaknesses, which allows them to accommodate each other. They have a profound commitment to each other, which over time can evolve and expand to include the greater community. It is my strong opinion that they will take their place among the most valued members of Circus Circus._

(Signed) _Stanford_

Little Rock lay on her bed. Tallahassee was snoring, on the couch. Sheets were rustling on the other bed. As two mounds under the sheets joined into one, she rolled over and closed her eyes.

"I love you, Krista," Columbus whispered.

"Twinkietwinkietwinkietwinkie," Tal muttered between snores.

"Family," she sighed, and went to sleep still smiling.

**I thought up Columbus's follow-through for Tal's line before I settled on the line itself. The ref is to "Thelma & Louise", which I've never seen but decided to look up for material. This is it for this fic, but I will be starting up a new one very shortly.**


End file.
